Mac the knife haunts Sturgeon
NICOLA Sturgeon seems to be haunted by her cabinet castoffs.
In her first reshuffle on taking charge in November 2014 there were two highprofile casualties.
Kenny MacAskill was dumped as justice secretary after seven years and Alex Neil was removed from his health secretary post.
Both are now major thorns in the First Minister’s side. Just this week, Neil used the cover of Sturgeon’s US trip to launch a 10-point plan to save the NHS.
The proposals, which included an eye-catching health tax measure, were impressive and will hopefully spark a long overdue debate on how we fund the health service.
But it’s hard to shake the feeling they were partly intended to undermine both Sturgeon and his replacement, Shona Robison.
Meanwhile, barely a week goes by without MacAskill saying something to the media that is deeply unhelpful to the SNP cause.
In the last two months alone he has called the party’s currency policy “not just lamentable, but laughable”, claimed Sturgeon is failing to take action needed to improve people’s lives and attacked the flagship policy of cutting air passenger duty.
This week he did the unthinkable, saying a second independence referendum would be a distraction from Sturgeon’s day job.
Alex Salmond’s cabinets were famous for keeping friends close and enemies closer.
Sturgeon may wish she had learned the lesson.